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Let us pray. Holy Father, we thank you that as we gather together t this morning, uh we can celebrate the truth that we do have a King and a Lord and a Savior who loves us and who has redeemed us. We pray, Lord, draw us close to Jesus Christ afresh and anew today. In his name. Amen. They say the devil is in the details. Have you heard that idea before? There's a story from a World War II, there's a story about a World War II British spy who, through excellent training and preparation, was able to infiltrate Dutch communities in occupied territory. He had mastered the Dutch language, and which is difficult for folks like Southerners and I think for Brits as well, with thick accents and not sort of neutral accents, hard to get that accent down. He had mastered the language, the accent, the mannerisms of Dutch people. He had flawlessly forged papers and with the help of the British government, flawlessly forged money, Dutch money. He had a meticulously crafted backstory. However, during a routine search as he's traveling from one occupied town to another for contraband, a routine search for contraband, a German officer noticed something strange about the way he wore his socks. Apparently, it wasn't all that common for Dutch peasants to wear socks at that period in time, but this man not only had socks on, but he was wearing them inside out to avoid blisters. British troops were famous. This is something for sure that a toddler would have noticed. Every toddler you've ever tried to put socks on has complained about that seam in the sock. And this British troops knew through long extended training with those thick wool socks that they were issued, that seam would wear on the top of their foot and they would get blisters. And so the practice, ingrained practice of switching those socks inside out to avoid blisters, revealed to a German officer that he was dealing with a spy. Someone who had infiltrated the occupied territory and was stirring up dissent and trying to foment rebellion against occupation. Would you have noticed something so trivial? Would you have noticed something so small as that seam being on the outside rather than on the inside of that sock? In our gospel reading, one of the thieves recognizes something about Jesus. And because he recognized that thing about Jesus, he put his faith in Christ. At that moment, at that moment, Jesus looked like everybody else. In fact, he looked like a criminal. His normal features were disfigured by blows, the crowds mocked and jeered at him, blood poured from open wounds. There was not an armed rebellion that you would expect if somebody captured a king or a president or a prime minister. There would have been an armed rebellion and an attempt to rescue their ruler, their king from that cross. There was no armed rebellion. In fact, all of Jesus' followers had scattered. No bloody battle being waged on behalf of the king of the Jews. And so, how in the world did that thief notice? How did he recognize who Jesus was as they hung there on that cross? A fourth-century bishop in northern Italy said this: although his gaping wounds, although he sees his gaping wounds and observes his blood pouring forth, he believes him to be God, whom he does not recognize as guilty. The thief doesn't believe that Jesus is guilty, as we saw in our text. He acknowledges him to be righteous, whom he does not think of as a sinner. He says to that other complaining thief, we are certainly receiving what is our due reward. But this man has done nothing wrong. Maximus says he understood that Christ received these blows because of others' sins. He sustained these wounds because of others' crimes. The thief knew that the wounds on the body of Christ were not Christ's wounds, but the thief's wounds. Therefore, after he recognized his own wounds on Christ's body, he began to love all the more. Now, if you're thinking that this speculation by Maximus is good sanctified imagination, you might be right. But the thief went from joining the crowds in railing and reviling against Jesus, as reported in Matthew 27, 44, to confessing Christ in our text. What changed in his heart? What did he see? What did he notice? There was a large variety of people gathered around to observe the crucifixion of Jesus, religious leaders, Roman soldiers, in the verses preceding our text, women in Jerusalem weeping over what they were seeing. Some of those groups grieved about what was taking place, while others spurned a dying man, talking about kicking a man when he's down. Jesus' response was to take all of their mocking with silence until he didn't take it anymore. And when he speaks, in the verse preceding our passage this morning, his words are mercy. He prays for the crowds and asks the Father to forgive them. I believe it was at that moment, that very moment of forgiveness, that the thief noticed who Jesus was. The confessing thief recognized the divine rule and cosmic mercy of Jesus. In that recognition, the thief switches his allegiance from the natural allies that he had on earth, his fellow criminal on the other side of Jesus, and all of the crowds mocking and railing against the God of the universe. He switches allegiance from them to a dying rabbi by declaring that Jesus was both innocent and in line to receive a kingdom. There are a lot of things I think we could draw from the response of this thief this morning, but I think we should take the simplest and most bare message away as we leave today. We should repent and confess Christ as our King and as our Savior. The appropriateness of this simple response to hearing about Jesus again and again. This is our again fresh and anew this morning. We're hearing about Jesus. Why is this the appropriate response? Because even the most well-intentioned people miss Jesus. They get too focused on the stuff of this life and miss the seam of the sock. Look at those first three groups of people surrounding the cross from our text this morning. The first are those Jewish rulers. The Jewish rulers realize and know Jesus intimately. They've spent a lot of time with Jesus. Jesus has spent a lot of time in their houses. He's traveled around, been invited to dine with them in those spectacles of meals that he had there with them, arguing about the various points of doctrine and law, and Jesus always pointing them to a deeper and truer faith. And yet they not only did he teach them, but they also were eyewitnesses of his miracles. The Pharisees had seen Jesus work miracle after miracle after miracle. And so when they say, You saved others, why don't you save yourself? When they said you saved others, they're not arguing or denying that reality. They have seen with their own eyes the power of Jesus Christ, and they are not denying that any of that was true, they are rejecting Jesus. They are not denying, they are rejecting. They are rejecting the Savior of the people whom they actually have seen save other people. And these who knew the Old Testament scriptures better than anyone else had no excuse for not recognizing in Jesus Christ the power of God Almighty, who said, who was said it was going to open the eyes of the blind and heal the lame and set captives free. And Jesus had done that time and again in their sight, and yet there they were, missing the point and missing Jesus because they were rejecting him. The next group around the cross, Roman soldiers mocking Jesus, offering him sour wine. Earlier in the torturing of Jesus, they put purple robes on him, covered his head, hid him, prophesy, who is hitting you? Fake bowing, casting lots for his clothes. They are rejecting and mocking the kingly authority of Jesus, who was literally declared in their presence king of the Jews. In three languages above his head. This is the king of the Jews. And there they were. All of the arrogance in the world mocking Jesus. But not all Roman soldiers rejected and mocked Jesus. They had, the centurion who had his sick servant, came to Jesus and said, Jesus, heal my servant. And he said, Okay, I'll go with you. And he said, You don't have to go with me. All you have to do is say a word, and everything will be taken care of, because I understand as a man under authority that you have all the power in the universe. Here are these Roman soldiers with the ability to read the declaration of the kingship of Jesus Christ, mocking him and rejecting him. And then there's the dying thief, the rejecting thief, the provoking thief, the railing thief, calling out to Jesus and mocking him, despite the fact that he is bearing his own guilt in his own body at that very moment, hanging on a cross, denying both King Jesus and Savior Jesus. Time and again in the Gospels, the blind, the grieving, the desperate clung to Jesus, but this thief rails and rejects the King of the universe. In the midst of these three negative responses to Jesus, there's one positive response. The other thief on the other side of Jesus leans forward, calls out to his friend, and he says, Do you not fear God? Now, Luke's gospel has a mention of fear 23 times. That's a lot. More than any of the other gospels. And if you can remember back a few chapters from chapter 18, there's a parable of a widow who goes and seeks justice from a judge who what? Neither fears God nor man. Time and again, this theme of not fearing God shows up in Luke's gospel. And here it is on display again. Do you not understand? Do you not reflect on your place before God Almighty, he says. Remember, justice is going to happen no matter what. In God's timing, justice is perfect and right. And here, this thief is getting what he deserves. But Jesus is different. The thief notice, the confessing thief notices that Jesus has done nothing wrong. And so what is Jesus' death? This confession that Jesus has done nothing wrong, what does that make Jesus' death then? It makes it a sacrifice. Just like in the temple, time and again, day after day, they sacrificed lambs that had neither spot nor blemish, and the ones that had done nothing wrong were sacrificed for the sake of everyone else. This dying thief, this confessing thief, sees in the righteousness of Jesus Christ the righteousness of a Savior. The sacrificial Lamb of God who will die to take away the sins of the world. And he sees in Jesus the cosmic mercy of God. And so he has a humble request. Humble request. Remember me, he says. Now, I think in this remember me, is this remember me request is a sort of like, leave the back door open for me, Jesus. Let me get in the back door, I'll sweep heaven for you. If you need someone to clean the toilets in your kingdom, I'm your guy. What's the bare minimum? What's the lowest rung position? Remember me so that I can have that in your kingdom. He doesn't say, hey, when you get in your kingdom, I want to be at your right hand or your left hand, like some of the disciples were prone to ask. They weren't, he wasn't asking, hey, you know what? When you get your kingdom, when you get your kingdom, I want to be a sort of under king under you and underlord under you, and I'm going to rule a whole section, like we see pictured in the book of Revelation with the 12 tribes and all the elders on their various thrones and stuff. He's not asking for that. He appears to just be simply saying, just have a little bit of mercy on me when you get what's yours. And the amazing thing here is he says, Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Now there was nothing kingly about Jesus at that exact moment. Naked, bruised, pierced, and in agony. Ironically, he was actually declared king right above his head, as I've pointed to a few times. Everyone was able to see the authority and the kingly majesty of Jesus if they had eyes to see. But this thief, this dying, confessing thief, was the only one to see with eyes of faith that Jesus was the one in control of that situation, that he was laying down his life and no one was taking it from him. Jewish people had grown up hearing, Jewish children had grown up hearing about a Messiah who was to come. Intertestamental Judaism, sort of after the book of Malachi, before the book of Matthew, that sort of apocryphal time with all of those amazing moments. If you read the Apocrypha, you'll see different times where the Lord reserves his people. That time was a time of waiting and anticipation. Those 400 years of silence when there was not a prophet in Israel to declare the tidings of God, those 400 years were not a time when the people were just sort of living however they pleased. They were afraid. They were wanting the righteousness and the justice of God to be brought near to them. And so when Jesus shows up on the scene, everybody flocks and says, Is this the guy? Is this the guy? And so many reject him because he doesn't appear to be the kind of king they were expecting. They wanted a righteous branch who would come in and wipe away all of the enemies. They wanted a righteous branch who would save them, like you would, like a fireman would save someone from a burning building, or like a drowning man is saved by a life raft being thrown to him, or like a person dangling off the edge of the cliff who has someone come by and reach and lift them up. That's the kind of salvation they wanted. They wanted someone to come in and on a white horse and ride in and defeat all of their enemies for them. They failed to understand that their truest and deepest problem was that they were separated from God by their own sin. And in Jesus Christ, this confessing thief saw with the eyes of faith the ability not only to reign and to rule over the situation like he was, but also the ability to have mercy and to bring salvation. The salvation promised in Jeremiah 23, did you notice that it was going to save Judah and save Israel? Not just save them from their enemies, but just actually to save, to redeem God's people. This righteous branch was coming to redeem. And in that twinkling of a moment, this thief notices and he says, Remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus' response to that thief is profound and interesting, and it's the same response that Jesus offers all of us today. He says, Truly I say to you, which is kind of saying, Verily, verily, Amen and Amen. As sure as sure can be, Jesus says to you and to me, and he says to this thief on the cross, You will, today you will be with me in paradise. Today, he says, not some far-off future, distant, eschatological moment. Not Revelation 19, where Jesus is on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, mowing down all of his enemies. Not some future day, but right now. Right now, you will be with me, he says. You will be with me in paradise. Now, in paradise, this paradise word is a curious word. In the New Testament, there's another word that's often used for heaven, for that great day when everybody's going to be together, there's no tears in anybody's eyes, all the pain's been done away with, all the wrong's been put to right, heaven. That's not what Jesus says. Jesus says, today you will be with me in paradise. The same word that's used for Eden in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is this the same word here that's being used, paradise. Eden was closed to human beings after the fall because God did not want mankind to do what? To go into the garden and take from the tree of life and eat that fruit and live forever in condemnation. Like the devil and all of his angels. So God in his mercy sets an angel with a flaming sword at the gates of Eden locked and secured so that no one can enter in. And Jesus says, today you're going to go into that paradise with me. Water and blood flow from the pierced sides of the Savior. Blood indicates the victory. Water stands for baptism. The two robbers on each side dispute with each other. One denies Christ is God, but the other wins heavenly glory. For us today, for all of us today, I want to call us, like in the words of Prudentius, that little bit of a poem that I just read for you, that we would win heavenly glory today. That we would not be the floor sweepers and the toilet cleansers and the janitors in heaven. That we would not be the kind of people who just sort of squeak in, as I've heard other people say about their faith with Jesus Christ. I'm really hoping that my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds and I'll just squeak in. I'll just get in by the skid of my teeth and be accepted. No, we are called to enter in by faith in Jesus Christ to receive from him access to paradise, access to renewed Eden. The only, the only way, the only way to receive from Jesus Christ the promise of paradise, the promise of redemption. The gift of his righteousness is by faith in him. By submitting ourselves fully and completely to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, to Christ our King. Today, the call is for you to turn from your sin and put all of your attention and all of your heart and all of your hope in Jesus Christ. And through the power of Jesus Christ to be transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of Christ. By God's mercy, we can enter in. So pray with me now and ask God to be merciful to you. Lord, we thank you for the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ, and we pray that today we would refresh, renew our hope and our trust in Jesus. That it wouldn't be some distant thing that we've done in the past or some memory for us, but it would be a fresh and living faith. On the cross, in this agony of your son, he welcomed in a sinner. Lord, we are sinners. We pray in your mercy, welcome us too. In Jesus' name. Amen.